by Tahir Shah
At breakfast next morning I asked Samson what he thought of the Rastafarian movement. He screwed up his face and stuck out his tongue.
“They’re not good people,” he said. “They come in my taxi and order me around. They pretend to be Ethiopians, but they don’t know anything about our country.”
“Where can I meet some?”
Samson seemed disappointed.
“They’re a waste of time,” he said.
An hour later we arrived at a shanty town on the northern fringes of the city. The shacks were made from little more than cardboard, which was melting into the mud now. Here and there sheets of plastic sacking offered some protection from the rains. In the gaps between the buildings, raw sewage flowed, and the alleyways were full of vicious dogs and even wilder children. Women were washing clothes in buckets, struggling to achieve cleanliness, while their husbands and teenage sons sat about laughing and watching the women work. As we approached, we saw a snaking line of people walking slowly through the slum towards us. They were all dressed in simple white shammas, their faces solemn.
“It’s a funeral,” said Samson. “Someone important has died.”
Sure enough there was a body in the middle of the cortège. As we bowed our heads in respect, I wondered if our visit was appropriate.
One of Samson’s contacts had said that a splinter Rasta group was living in the shanty town and that they were anxious to get back to the grassroots of the Rastafarian creed. When the funeral procession had passed us, Samson went in search of the leader of the group. A few minutes later he hurried back and led me to the hideaway. The headquarters of the Rastafarian New Order lay in a steep-sided house. The place was well swept and lit by natural light which flooded in through a pair of large windows adjacent to the door. A single figure was sitting at the back of the room. His name was Jah and it was he whom we had come to see.
Jah didn’t get up, but even before I saw him walking, I knew he was the kind of man who walked with a sway of the hips. He wore a denim coat torn at the collar, stone-washed Levis and a red mohair vest, with no shirt underneath it.
“All white men are sinners,” he said in a thick Jamaican accent. “The whiter you are, the more you have sinned.”
I thanked him for the information and introduced myself I was pleased we’d managed to meet with so little trouble. I was looking forward to talking to him.
“I’ll talk,” he said, “but I need some cash for ganj. No cash, no ganj, no talk.”
It was a firm line to take, but I respect a man with principles, so I slipped him a torn fifty birr note. Jah stuffed it in his coat pocket and pulled out a cigar-sized joint. Then he leaned back on a dilapidated couch, thrust back his mane of dreadlocks, lit the joint and inhaled.
“Welcome to the New Order,” he said.
“How are you different from other Rastafarians?”
He asked if I knew of the history of the movement. I said I’d read a certain amount. I knew about Garvey and the steamship plan. He nodded through a haze of smoke.
“That’s good, man, that’s good. You know about Garvey.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then you know that the path strayed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Garvey had a goal: Africa. That’s why I’m here,” he said. “He knew the work can only start when we’re on this holy ground. But Garvey got lost and Marley got found.”
“Great music,” I said limply.
“Screw the music, man. Bob Marley got it wrong. We are the new path... we’re gonna retrace the steps...”
“From Garvey?”
“Yeah, man,” said Jah in a fog of smoke, “we’re gonna recraft the message. Black takes white.” He paused for effect. “Checkmate.”
“What about Ras Tafari and his line, the line of Solomon?”
“Ras Tafari was a dude,” said Jah, “so was Solomon. They understood about the Rasta Way... the Path. Yeah, man, those dudes were Rastas.”
When Jah had finished his joint he lit another. I asked him what he knew of Solomon.
“King Solomon was the wise king,” he said. “Think about it. If you were as wise as he, wouldn’t you line your pockets too?”
“But he needed the gold for the temple on Mount Moriah.”
“What are you on, man?” snapped Jah. “Solomon just said he needed the gold for the temple.”
“You mean he was lying?”
“No way, man, he was the wise king.”
“So what happened to the gold?”
Jah inhaled until his lungs were bursting. His nostrils flared and his eyes widened so much I thought they’d fall out on to his lap.
“The Copper Scroll,” he choked, “check out the Copper Scroll.”
Mariam was arthritic, had flat feet, and a taste for chewing chicken bones. He kept a plate of carcasses within easy reach and sucked on them between meals. Samson had taken me to the old prospector’s shack which was lost in the sprawl of Addis Ababa’s bustling Mercato area. Mariam, he said, was a regular in his taxi cab and had mined in the north of Ethiopia forty years ago. I wasn’t sure why Samson hadn’t mentioned the old man before.
Mariam must have been eighty though he didn’t look it. The grease from the chicken bones had kept his skin soft and oiled. It was his speech that gave away his age. It was punctuated by wheezing, as if an enormous weight was pressing down on his chest. Even so, he spoke fluent English and Italian as well as four Ethiopian languages. He had never met Frank Hayter, but he remembered his friend, a cantankerous Irishman called Thaddeus Michael O”Shea.
“Everyone knew O”Shea,” he said, fumbling for another bone, “he was a legend. He claimed to have found a cave full of gold...”
“At Tullu Wallel?”
“No, no, in the north, near Axum. Near the monastery of Debra Damo.”
“Another cave, another treasure?”
Mariam nodded and rubbed a sleeve across his mouth.
“There’s more than one treasure all right,” he said. “O”Shea found the cave while prospecting. But he never mined any gold there. He was terrified by the curse.”
“What curse?”
“Anyone who mined gold in the cave would have their body ripped limb from limb by wolves. Then the wolves would hunt down the victim’s family and eat them as well.”
The curse reminded me of the hyenas in Harar. I wondered if there was a link. The stories credited to Hayter and O”Shea spoke of caverns filled with gold. No one seemed to know for certain whether they were the entrances to mine-shafts or simply caves in which treasure had been stashed. If they were old mines, then it was more than likely they’d been mined out in ancient times.
I told Mariam that we were planning to follow Hayter’s trail to Tullu Wallel after we had been north.
“Tullu Wallel is a savage place,” he said. “Only a fool would head that way, especially now the rains are here. The mud will be three feet deep, and four feet in places. You’ll need a great many mules and ropes, and some good men.”
“I’ve hired a Jeep,” I said, gloating. “It used to be in the imperial motorcade.”
Mariam narrowed his eyes and threw down the chicken bone.
“It won’t get anywhere near the mountain,” he said.
Later, at lunch, Samson picked at a bowl of spaghetti without speaking. I knew his thoughts were on his taxi repair bills and his burnt-out house. As his employer I felt it was my responsibility to weigh in and help get him out of the quagmire of debt. So, overcome with weakness, I doubled his salary and slid another wad of cash across the table. A faint glimmer of a smile appeared. I asked him what he thought about the story of Thaddeus O”Shea and the cave filled with gold.
“I think Ethiopia is different from your country or America,” he said. “People here cannot afford to go around looking for treasure in caves. That would take time, and they need their time to earn money. If they don’t earn, they starve.”
“But why hasn’t the government searched f
or the caves?”
“Perhaps they already have.”
The Emperor’s Jeep lurched up the hill to the Hotel Ghion at six o’clock the next morning. Only three cylinders were functioning, and none of the repair work had been carried out. Bahru shook my hand violently. The car might look in bad shape, he said, but it was as strong as an elephant. I was so pleased he’d actually turned up that I decided to believe him. We loaded the bags, some sturdy three-ply rope that I’d bought in the market, a pair of Chinese-made jerry cans, a charcoal brazier and forty square feet of tarpaulin. Bahru had left the vehicle running and was forced to admit that the starter motor didn’t work. The engine could only be turned off if the Jeep was pointing downhill.
When everything was aboard, Samson climbed into the front seat and I got in the back. Our first destination was to be Lalibela, where the “Gold of Sheba” was supposedly kept in the treasury of a church. Looking at my Michelin map I judged the distance from Addis Ababa to be about four hundred miles. I asked Bahru how long it would take to get there, but he refused to say. Samson had no idea either. In the end it turned out that neither of them had ever been north of the capital.
On hiring the vehicle I had given Bahru seven hundred birr to fill up with petrol and to change the tires. After that he would be responsible for all breakdowns and punctures. Now the tires were as bald as ever and the tank was almost dry. I kicked myself for having believed that the money would ever be used for the correct purpose. As I’d discovered in Peru, when people are living hand-to-mouth, funds are spent on necessities, though in Bahru’s case I suspected he’d had a night on the town instead.
Before setting out on the Amazonian riverboat journey, I’d watched my guide, a Vietnam veteran called Richard Fowler, publicly humiliate and then fire one of the employees. He told me later that he’d done it as a warning to the rest of the crew. Fowler said you had to be cruel to be kind. Following his example, I launched into Samson and Bahru. If I had any trouble from either of them, I said, they’d be returning to Addis on the bus. They looked at me with long faces. The journey north had begun on a sour note.
We drove out of Addis Ababa at low speed. The Emperor’s Jeep wasn’t a patch on the French Ambassador’s car but it was a great improvement on the local bus. Although it was still early, hundreds of people were walking into the city through the platinum light. Most Ethiopians living in rural areas have no choice but to walk. Some of them were herding flocks of animals down the main road and must have come from far away. Long-horned cattle were goaded forward with the swish of a cane, their backs steaming, their heads bent low. There were donkeys as well, all laden with merchandize: sacks of coffee, baskets and firewood, earthenware pots and pans, scrap metal and hides. And on the edge of the road hundreds of barefoot children staggered along beneath piles of sticks.
“We passed through the first of many small towns. The street-sellers were getting ready, placing potatoes and dung patties in neat clusters on their sidewalk stalls. Others were laying out fresh animal hides to dry in the sun, or slaughtering chickens and draining their blood. Morning in Africa is the most peaceful time and place I know. There’s a gentleness about it which is hard to describe, except to say that it’s framed in a naturalness which has been knocked out of our own world.
We drove through forests of eucalyptus and out over a pancake-flat plateau. We passed a church, at the steps of which a pair of elderly women were kneeling while the priest beat a row of carpets with a baton. The rough fields were awash with children dressed in rags, many no older than four or five. Most of them had been out all night tending the goats. Their noses were streaming and their faces pale with cold.
The Emperor’s Jeep ground along in fourth gear at fifteen miles an hour. Bahru had already demonstrated an alarming habit of waiting until he was on a blind bend before overtaking. Most of the vehicles on Ethiopian roads were gargantuan trucks, overladen with goods. Private cars were almost non-existent, except for those owned by aid organizations. Samson said that people in Addis preferred to stay there. The roads were too dangerous and besides, once you’d tasted life in the big city, village life seemed dull.
Outside a hamlet Bahru slammed on the brakes. He’d spotted a man selling some qat by the side of the road. The Jeep took a hundred yards to stop. I made a mental note to get the brake-pads seen to.
The qat-seller had a strand of turquoise cloth wound in a crude turban around his head. He pointed to a pit which could only be seen by leaning over a craggy stone outcrop. The Italians, he said, had once killed seventy children and hurled their bodies into the pit. If we looked hard we’d see their bones.
Gradually the round huts were replaced with square ones that had tall thatched roofs. Wood smoke spiralled up from fires in the forest, and dry stone walls divided the fields. Then we came to meadows and terraced hillsides where nothing but tiny purple flowers grew; and we passed through a series of tunnels hewn out of the rock, their rough sides glistening like cut glass. Further on we passed camels chewing listlessly at the cacti that grew along the road. High above, rain clouds threatened a monsoon downpour.
The road was not good, but it was far superior to the others I’d seen in Ethiopia, though every mile of it was dotted with the rusting chassis of wrecks. In the West we hold roads in high esteem. They lead us from one place to the next. We care about their condition and their straightness. But in a land where most people travel by foot, and where so many road journeys end in fatalities, roads are not held in high regard at all.
Samson hadn’t forgiven me for berating him before setting out. His taxi had crashed, his house had burnt down, and on top of all that, I’d yelled at him for the sake of it. At the third stop for qat I took him aside and apologized. I’d shouted, I said, to make sure Bahru didn’t take advantage of us. It had been nothing more than an ingenious ploy. Samson’s expression warmed, and the dimples returned to his cheeks. He rummaged in his tartan bag and took out a large brown manila envelope. It was a gift, he said.
“What is it?”
“Some research.”
I broke the seal and took out several sheets of paper. Samson had found an article on the Copper Scroll, the one which Jah had spoken about. Though I’d actually seen the Copper Scroll in Amman’s National Museum a few years before, I hadn’t understood its importance at the time.
The Copper Scroll was found along with the other Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in 1952. While most were written on papyrus, the Copper Scroll’s text was, as its name suggests, etched on a sheet of beaten copper eight feet long but less than one-twentieth of an inch thick. The text listed sixty-four locations in the Holy Land where an enormous quantity of gold and other treasure acquired from a great temple was hidden. Scholars have postulated that the temple could have been that of Solomon.
Copper was an expensive metal in ancient times, and writing on it an extremely slow business. It is hard to believe that anyone going to the trouble of writing on such a rare medium would have made it up, and it is clear that the Essene priests at Qumran used copper because they didn’t want the text to deteriorate. Biblical scholars agree that the text speaks of a monumental hoard of gold and silver but, depending on the translation, the weight of the gold varies from twenty-six tonnes to forty-four tonnes. More aggravating still is the fact that no one has determined exactly where the treasure is buried.
That evening we slept at a roadside bar in a village of uncertain name, perched on a steep hill. Night fell after a thunderstorm of astonishing force. The Emperor’s Jeep had overheated, requiring us to stop. Bahru promised that he’d fix the car’s leaking radiator by dawn and, since morale was low, I decided to treat him and Samson to a dish of injera, fermented Ethiopian bread, and a mutton stew.
As we ate a teenage boy hobbled over, his weight supported by a pole. His right leg was wasted and bent sharply at the knee. The foot beneath it was curled and withered. Ethiopia’s villages are full of such people whose dreadful deformities could have been prevented with a single d
ose of polio vaccine. He was too proud to ask for food but we could see his ribs and knew he must be desperately hungry. Samson asked him to join us. The invalid refused politely, as if he had a better invitation elsewhere. Again, Samson asked, and again the boy refused. Only when Samson stood up and led him to our table did he give way. Then Samson selected the best pieces from the stew and made sure our guest ate them all.
As I sat there after the meal, touched by Samson’s thoughtfulness, I reflected on Ethiopia. The country was once occupied by the Italians but it was never colonized. As a result it has retained its own very distinctive identity and sense of pride. Ethiopians listen to Ethiopian music, they wear Ethiopian dress and they eat their own traditional food. Though many want to emigrate to America, they know very little about Western society. The only flaw in this cultural homogeneity is the absence of an awareness of their past. The more time I spent in Ethiopia, the more I came to understand how incongruous this was. There is no other sub-Saharan country with such a rich cultural heritage and it seemed extraordinary that the wealth of its history was not being harnessed.
Unlike most of his countrymen, Samson had studied the nation’s history. He was a self-schooled expert on the Kebra Negast and the other important Ge’ez texts. His strength was founded in his knowledge of Ethiopian history. It seemed a terrible waste that such a solid member of society should be so desperate to leave, to go to America.
“There is no future here,” said Samson after the meal. “You come from a country where people have choices, even though they may be unaware of the fact. We’re looking for Solomon’s gold mines because we have food on our plates and we’re healthy. We can wake up in the morning and not have to worry about getting enough money to eat. But put yourself in the place of the boy who was our guest tonight. Most Ethiopians are like him. A few birr in his pocket and a little education would allow him to think of the future. But that boy and millions like him don’t have that layer of fat to support them...”
